SOEPpapers 600, 32 S.
Richard Layard, Dan Chisholm, Vikram Patel, Shekhar Saxena
2013
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This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance of life-satisfaction in the population of a country than physical health does, and much more than unemployment and income do. Income explains 1% of the variance of life-satisfaction or less. 2. Much the most common forms of mental illness are depression and anxiety disorders. Rigorously defined, these affect about 10% of all the world's population - and prevalence is similar in rich and poor countries. 3. Depression and anxiety are more common during working age than in later life. They account for a high proportion of disability and impose major economic costs and financial losses to governments worldwide. 4. Yet even in rich countries, under a third of people with diagnosable mental illness are in treatment. 5. Cost-effective treatments exist, with recovery rates of 50% or more. In rich countries treatment is likely to have no net cost to the Exchequer due to savings on welfare benefits and lost taxes. But even in poor countries a reasonable level of coverage could be obtained at a cost of under $2 per head of population per year.
Topics: Well-being, Distribution, Inequality, Health, Gender, Education, Labor and employment
JEL-Classification: I10;I14;I18
Keywords: Mental illness, welfare benefits, healthcare costs, life-satisfaction
Frei zugängliche Version: (econstor)
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/87712